Cairo (1963)

Cairo is a 1963 American crime film directed by Wolf Rilla and written by Joan LaCour Scott. The film stars George Sanders, Richard Johnson, Faten Hamama, John Meillon, Ahmed Mazhar, Eric Pohlmann and the director's father Walter Rilla. The film was released on August 21, 1963, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Mastermind Brit criminal Major Pickering arrives in Cairo by air from a Greek prison, on a phony passport. The Major has a full-proof scheme to rob King Tut's jewels, which are displayed in the secure Cairo Museum and worth to the robbers a quarter of a million dollars. Through his contact man Nicodemos, the shady casino operator brother of the Major's con artist passport illustrator Greek cellmate, he rounds up a disparate gang to execute the daring heist. The only gang member known to the Major is the reliable countryman and fellow soldier, an explosive expert safe-cracker, Willy (John Meillon), now a family man, marrying native and reluctant to go on the caper until persuaded by a fast $25,000 cut.

Nicodemos gets untrustworthy import-export businessman Kuchuk to finance the caper, while the Major hires lazy coffee shop owner Kerim as driver and his hashish smoking hot-headed gun-wielding small-time stick-up man Ali as his enforcer. Ali looks upon it as his last chance to buy a sugar cane farm in his country birthplace, and pretends to be indifferent to the unconditional love shown to him by the penniless hard-luck nice girl belly dancer Amina.

The boys go through the sewer as planned, but inside the museum an alarm is accidentally triggered and brings the police before they can make a clean escape. It results in Willy being fatally shot and dropped off at home. When the robbers that evening go to exchange the jewels for the money, Kuchuk and his gun wielding accomplice Ghattas pull a double-cross, and in an ensuing shoot-out Ghattas is dead and Ali seriously wounded, with Kuchuk now forced by the Major to make a deal with the police for $200,000 or they will melt down the invaluable jewels.

When the frightened Nicodemos is intimidated by the persistent police commandant and Kuchuk commits suicide, the rest of the gang is rounded up before they can escape from Cairo—with Ali dying in Amina's arms just as they reach by car his father's farm and the Major captured alive when staying too long to admire a belly dancer as the police raid the area.

Synopsis

Pickering, surnommé « Le Major » en raison de son élégance, sort de prison. Durant sa longue peine, il a tout de même mis au point un dernier coup : Dérober les bijoux du Pharaon Toutânkhamon, exposé dans un musée en Égypte. Il débarque au Caire, retrouve ses anciens complices et leur explique son projet minutieusement préparé. Mais alors que plan d'action se déroule sans encombre, une alarme se déclenche...

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